


It's CactUS, not CactI

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Cactus Transformation, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 10:44:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19316578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: "I amsosorry about this," Danny says, shoving a pot into Ward's hands, which appears to contain some sort of monster hell-thistle. "You got my texts, right? -- Don't touch her! She's very prickly!"Ward nearly drops the pot, manages not to, and reflects that there was a time in his life when he would have been baffled by a text from Danny readingJessica is a cactus now, please watch her while we try to find a way to un-cactus her. At this point he's just kind of grimly resigned.





	It's CactUS, not CactI

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry for this title.
> 
> This fic is a spinoff/kind of a maybe-not-canonical sequel for [Cute But Prickly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16291655) (in which Ward got turned into a cactus), resulting from [a discussion about cactus on DW](https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1246202.html) which ultimately turned into [a request](https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1246202.html?thread=18643962#cmt18643962) in the comments.
> 
> This also fills my "side effects" square for h/c bingo.

"I am _so_ sorry about this," Danny says, shoving a pot into Ward's hands, which appears to contain some sort of monster hell-thistle. "You got my texts, right? -- Don't touch her! She's very prickly!"

Ward nearly drops the pot, manages not to, and reflects that there was a time in his life when he would have been baffled by a text from Danny reading _Jessica is a cactus now, please watch her while we try to find a way to un-cactus her_. At this point he's just kind of grimly resigned. "Yeah," he says. "So I just ... put her on the table, or what?"

"Yeah, we're just worried about leaving her alone," Danny says. "She might be scared. Where's that bag -- oh." He holds out a plastic shopping bag with spines poking through it. "Keep this with her, please? It's, uh. Pieces of her."

_"What,"_ Ward says blankly. 

"She's a jumping cholla, apparently? Pieces fall off and get stuck to, well, to things. People." Danny winces, and Ward takes note of the numerous scratches and bandaids on the backs of Danny's hands, and holds the pot a little farther from his body. He manages to hook his little finger into the handle of the shopping bag.

"So Colleen's in the car, and I gotta go, thanks! Just be really careful and maybe wear gloves if you have to move her," Danny says, and starts to run off, then dashes back to close the door of Ward's apartment.

"You're welcome," Ward says to the door, standing there holding a potted cactus, not wearing gloves.

After a minute, he carries the pot with great care to the coffee table. Jessica's thorny little clubs wobble whenever it ... she ... whenever Ward moves the pot. He sets it down with great care, and takes a quick step back.

And then he just stands there and stares at the cholla for a little while. It would be nice to say that things like this never happened to him before Danny came back into his life, but until Danny showed up in New York again, he'd been a flunkie for his horribly abusive zombie dad, so ... perhaps not.

Still, there are times when he wishes he hadn't quit drinking.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" he says to cactus-Jessica, and he's not sure if it's just his imagination that her loosely connected branches seem to ripple slightly. "Yeah. My thoughts exactly. I'd offer you a drink, but you're a cactus, plus I'm on the wagon these days." Also holding a conversation with a cactus. "Coffee," he mutters to himself, and goes into the kitchen. He then realizes he's still holding the bag of cholla pieces (Jessica pieces? please no) and sets it carefully on the countertop.

He's filling the coffeepot when there is a soft sound from the living room, the whisper of a footstep, the stir of a breeze. He looks up to see a dark-clad figure halfway through the window, face mostly covered with a black scarf, one foot on his living room carpet. 

The figure freezes. So does Ward. That's not Daredevil, which leaves a very limited number of people it could possibly be, none of whom he wants to meet. He takes a careful step backwards, towards the drawer in which he keeps a not-exactly-legal-in-Manhattan gun behind the silverware. (There's another in his nightstand, and a third taped under the sink in the bathroom. When you hang around Danny Rand, you develop certain habits.)

"I'm not here for you," the black-clad figure says quietly. The voice is female. She pulls her other leg inside the window. "I want the cactus."

Of course she does. His first instinct is just to let her take it, but dammit, Danny entrusted it to him; he just failed to mention that people were actually after it. Ward slips his hand behind him and eases the drawer quietly open. "Sorry," he says. "Can't let you do that. This cactus is already spoken for."

"Too bad, I'm taking it anyway." She picks it up by the pot in black-gloved hands.

And Ward gets his hand on the gun, whips it out of the drawer and points it at her. 

"Oh, come _on,"_ she says, sounding exasperated. "You'd shoot me over a cactus?"

"Yeah, I can't believe it either. Too bad, so sad. How'd you get up here, anyway? We're on the sixteenth floor."

"Like this," she says, and lightly jumps from the floor to the back of the couch, where she crouches, holding the pot. Jessica's thorns wobble at the leap, and one branch suddenly detaches and falls to impale itself on the couch.

The cactus burglar looks down at the detached cholla limb, eyes widening in abject horror.

Which gives Ward the opportunity to pick up the bag of cactus pieces with the hand not holding the gun, and lob it at her.

A year of traveling with Danny has given him certain skills, one of which is knife throwing. He's still not great at it, but he's vastly improved his useless softball pitching arm since grade school. The bag of cactus is aimed at the burglar's face, and she's holding the cactus in both gloved hands, so she goes on pure instinct, drops the cactus and starts to dodge, then in mid-drop realizes what she's done and catches it again. 

By the spines.

And then the bag of cholla hits her in the face.

Ward can only stare. Sometimes he amazes himself.

 

***

 

"You could have just explained," he says, picking cholla spines out of Trish Walker's palms with tweezers in the bathroom. The door is open so they can both watch the cactus, like it's going to get up and walk away or something.

She makes a growling noise that turns into a pained whine as he tries to work out a particularly well-lodged spine between the webbing of her second and third finger.

He's only met Trish once or twice in person, never really talked to her, but he's seen her on the news plenty of times. Certainly enough to recognize her as soon as he helped her peel the cholla-covered scarf off her bleeding face.

Her face still looks terrible, but the spines missed her eyes, lips, and anything else vital. Ward is not quite sure whether to think that Jessica managed it on purpose somehow, or whether it's just down to luck and the sturdy fabric of Trish's scarf. Jessica's freshly detached limb has been added to the rest of them, retrieved with a pair of salad tongs and deposited on the coffee table. Ward has decided not to ask if all her pieces can be put back together; he has resolutely categorized that as Danny's problem, as is -- to the maximum extent possible -- the entire issue of Trish "Trish Talk" Walker sneaking in his window dressed like Catwoman and apparently possessing superhuman reflexes.

"There," he says, prying out the last of the spines, and blots the blood away with a cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide. "You want bandages for any of this?"

"No," Trish says grudgingly. "I'm fine."

"Cup of coffee? I'll need to finish making it. Someone interrupted me."

Trish grimaces, flexing her hands. "I just need to take Jessica and go."

"You're going to climb down the side of my building with a cactus?"

"I was sort of hoping I could go out the front door this time."

"I'm not letting you leave with that cactus," Ward says, and slouches out to make coffee. On his way, he swipes the gun off the counter and stuffs it into his pocket, which he knows is a terrible place for a gun, but he's done dumber things. "Don't make me call security and tell them about the woman sprinting down the hallway holding a cactus."

"They won't catch me," she says, coming into the kitchen with her hands held out like she doesn't quite want to curl her fingers.

"Dark roast or medium?"

"Dark," she sighs, leaning a hip on the counter.

"A woman after my own heart."

 

***

 

They're sitting on opposite ends of the couch with cactus-Jessica on the coffee table between them, Trish holding her cup very carefully in her scabbed-over hands, when Ward's buzzer announces a visitor and Colleen says, in a strained voice, "Ward, let me in."

He does, and opens the door for her. Colleen stumbles inside carrying a pot with one of the oddest and doofiest-looking cactuses that Ward has ever seen. It's a green stalk with a ball of yellow prickles on top. In fact, it looks alarmingly like ...

"Is that _Danny?"_ He can't quite keep the horror out of his voice.

"It's a moon graft cactus," Colleen says wearily, tottering into the kitchen to put the cactus gently on the counter. "It's some kind of grafted hybrid, not even an actual cactus, I looked it up on my phone on the way over here and I can't believe ... oh hi, Trish."

"Hi," Trish says reluctantly, with a small wave, sitting with her legs tucked up under her.

"That's Danny," Ward says, and very carefully starts to touch a spine, then jerks his hand away. He can't help thinking of Jessica's cactus parts falling off. Also, it feels kind of intrusive to poke at him like this.

"It's okay, he's hardly even prickly," Colleen says, which is _not the point._ "Do you have tea?"

"Second cabinet." Another thing that goes along with having Danny in his life. "Electric kettle is under the sink. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that things didn't go as planned."

Colleen heaves a very long sigh and takes down a box of tea. She takes out three tea bags and puts them in a mug.

"Wait, that's Danny Rand?" Trish says from the couch.

Colleen fills the kettle at the sink, and says without turning around, "I would have brought Luke too, but he's a saguaro cactus in a concrete planter, and he's too big to move."

"It's a good thing this city is in competent hands," Ward says because he can't help himself, it's that or scream, and Colleen gives him a very long look that says the only reason why she isn't stabbing him is because she's had a very long day and it's too much effort. "... sorry. Look. I talk. It's what I do."

"I know," Colleen says. The kettle shuts off. She fills her mug.

"We'll get them back," Ward says. "I mean, we've got a ninja, and an, uh, another ninja," with a nod to Trish, "and, well, me, with the ability to leverage a Fortune 500 company into finding a way to fix this."

Colleen swirls her tea bags around in her cup. "I don't think you can fix _this_ by throwing money at it, Ward."

"I wasn't suggesting that, exactly, just ... you'd be surprised what money actually can buy. Need to go somewhere in a hurry? Need someone brought here? I can do that." 

"I don't know." Colleen runs her hand through her hair, dislodging whatever was still managing to cling to a semblance of a ponytail. "I, just ... it's been a really long night, Ward." She looks up suddenly. "Why is Trish Walker here?"

Trish looks at the Jessica cactus.

"Oh, okay," Colleen says in a small voice, and picks up her mug of tea and holds it in both hands. 

Danny, Ward knows, would want him to do something at this point. He pats Colleen on the shoulder. She gives him a look. He removes his hand.

"We'll fix this," he tells her, and she gives him the smallest of smiles, which is more than he was expecting. And Danny ... well. Danny. He can't quite bring himself to touch Danny's fragile-looking spines, so he curls a hand around Danny's pot instead.

**Author's Note:**

> [Jumping cholla](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Opuntia_fulgida_1_-_Desert_Botanical_Garden.jpg)  
> [Moon cactus (grafted)](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-oqm1pc/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/2254/7256/moon_cactus__12607.1543598650.jpg?c=2) (and also [a Danny cactus closeup](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2719/1640/products/d69976b3c5be0f28b15979b589ca7004_a665c016-66c8-49ce-9061-2ea64f4e24d3.jpg?v=1556811528))  
> [Saguaro](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571924b4746fb97d675d231a/t/58eceef3a5790acbf03bba99/1491927582311/Sabino+Canyon+National+Forest%2C+Tucson+Arizona%2C+NuventureTravels.com%2C+Saguaro+Cactus%2C+Desert)
> 
> Don't worry, they'll all be fine eventually.


End file.
